Cynthia touched his arm. “Don’t ask for them, Teddy!”
He brushed her off, not unkindly but decisively. “I’ve got to know. Let’s have the explanation.”
“You won’t like it.”
“I’ll chance it.”
“Very well.” Hoag settled back. “Will you serve the wine, my dear? Thank you. I shall have to tell you a little story first. It will be partly allegorical, as there are not the…the words, the concepts. Once there was a race, quite unlike the human race — quite. I have no way of describing to you what they looked like or how they lived, but they had one characteristic you can understand: they were creative. The creating and enjoying of works of art was their occupation and their reason for being. I say ‘art’ advisedly, for art is undefined, undefinable, and without limits. I can use the word without fear of misusing it, for it has no exact meaning. There are as many meanings as there are artists. But remember that these artists are not human and their art is not human.
“Think of one of this race, in your terms — young. He creates a work of art, under the eye and the guidance of his teacher. He has talent, this one, and his creation has many curious and amusing features. The teacher encourages him to go on with it and prepare it for the judging. Mind you, I am speaking in metaphorical terms, as if this were a human artist, preparing his canvases to be judged in the annual showing.”
He stopped and said suddenly to Randall, “Are you a religious man? Did it ever occur to you that all this” — he included the whole quietly beautiful countryside in the sweep of his arm — “might have had a Creator? Must have had a Creator?”
Randall stared and turned red. “I’m not exactly a church-going man,” he blurted, “but — Yes, I suppose I do believe it.”
“And you, Cynthia?”
She nodded, tense and speechless.
“The Artist created this world, after His Own fashion and using postulates which seemed well to Him. His teacher approved on the whole, but — ”
“Wait a minute,” Randall said insistently. “Are you trying to describe the creation of the world — the Universe?”
“What else?”
“But — damn it, this is preposterous! I asked for an explanation of the things that have just happened to us.”
“I told you that you would not like the explanation.” He waited for a moment, then continued. “The Sons of the Bird were the dominant feature of the world, at first.”
Randall listened to him, feeling that his head would burst. He knew, with sick horror, that the rationalization he had made up on the way to the rendezvous had been sheerest moonshine, thrown together to still the fears that had overcome him. The Sons of the Bird — real, real and horrible — and potent. He felt that he knew now the sort of race of which Hoag spoke. From Cynthia’s tense and horrified face she knew, also — and there would never again be peace for either of them. “In the Beginning there was the Bird — ”
Hoag looked at him with eyes free of malice but without pity. “No,” he said serenely, “there was never the Bird. They who call themselves Sons of the Bird there are. But they are stupid and arrogant. Their sacred story is so much superstition. But in their way and by the rules of this world they are powerful. The things, Edward, that you thought you saw you did see.”
“You mean that — ”
“Wait, let me finish. I must hasten. You saw what you thought you saw, with one exception. Until today you have seen me only in your apartment, or mine. The creatures you shadowed, the creature that frightened Cynthia — Sons of the Bird, all of them. Stoles and his friends.
“The teacher did not approve of the Sons of the Bird and suggested certain improvements in the creation. But the Artist was hasty or careless; instead of removing them entirely He merely — painted over them, made them appear to be some of the new creations with which He peopled His world.